[DCRB-L] RE: Names of publishers

[Deborah J. Leslie]

Oh no, Richard, I'm not rolling my eyes in the least. I made that statement about addresses, and then swallowed my inclination to give my preferences. I am emboldened by your arguments, though, and will tip my hand a bit here. I would like to see the rules give encouragement for recording addresses, drop the provision that allows only the first publisher's name to be included while omitting subsequent ones, and stop the silent omission of t.p. dedication and privilege statements. And of course there's the silent roman to Arabic date "adjustment" to be scrutinized. 
 
Since this revision is going to be guided with a firm and (I think) thorough statement of explicit general principles, all of these proposals for change (or retention) will need to be made with reference to them. The general principles document is in preparation, but I would like to encourage everyone to read IFLA's _Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records_. It's technical and not rare-material oriented, but I think we will be able profitably to use the concepts and relationships of entities and user tasks to get a firmer grip on why we do what we do. All 144 pages can be found at:  http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr.pdf
 
 
Of course, one thing to keep in mind is that the clamor of the ARL [Association of Research Libraries] library directors for more streamlined and easier-to-follow rules can't be ignored. It doesn't need to be an either-or, at least in this early stage of thinking. If we're thoughtful and careful about this, we can navigate between the rocks and the whirlpool.  
 
___________________________ 
Deborah J. Leslie, M.A., M.L.S. 
Head of Cataloging 
Folger Shakespeare Library 
201 East Capitol St., S.E. 
Washington, D.C. 20003 
202.675-0369 (p) 
202.675-0328 (f) 
djleslie at folger.edu 
www.folger.edu 

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Noble [mailto:Richard_Noble at brown.edu]
Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2002 1:57 PM
To: dcrb-l at lib.byu.edu
Subject: Re: [DCRB-L] RE: Names of publishers


Deborah's accustomed to my somewhat non-orthodox thinking, so she'll just roll her eyes at the following screed:

In the course of a recent non-library cataloguing project, I rejoiced several times that the Bodleian cataloguers had elected to transcribe imprints in full, including addresses--and there they were in the "WorldCat". Addresses change over time, and can provide invaluable evidence for dating undated materials. As records that include them accumulate in a database, we find ourselves with a historical resource that Plomer couldn't even have dreamed of. The same applies in the case of transcribing all names in a conger, rather than the supremely frustrating "[and 5 others]". It also applies to the wording of imprints, in itself a matter of considerable interest; the more we accumulate, the more we know, and the time to do the accumulating is when we have the items in hand. We are at that moment in a privileged position to contribute importantly to historical bibliography. Frankly, as a bibliographically inclined cataloguer, I've never understood how imprints differ from titles enough to justify the omission of this information. I find it intellectually incoherent.

The whole purpose of DCRM is to address the very different approach that we take to the marks on the page as historical artifact and historical evidence. It is different enough to have encountered resistance when the rules were first being devised--at a time when we were still mostly producing card sets, before it was clear how much more powerful and flexible our new forms of data storage and management could be. The resulting compromises are mostly unfortunate. I am much more interested in the spirit of DCRM than I am in the spirit of AACR, which properly serves different purposes in a different context. My hope for the BSC has always been that it could represent and advance the interests of bibliographical scholarship, to the extent that the catalogue--in the widest sense--is itself a scholarly bibliographical resource. We can do so by at least maximizing a certain permissiveness in the treatment of "other" information.

(Peter Blayney has recently remarked rather savagely on the omission of privilege statements in imprints--it is not a trivial matter. Another scholar, John Buchtel, recently lamented, on exlibris, the omission of dedicatees. One might also mention sermon texts, which are supremely relevant title information. I've also rejoiced when cataloguers include all the honorifics, degrees, positions, and encomia attached to authors' names in statements of responsibility: the bibliographic database can be one of our most comprehensive resources for authority work, after all, and that purpose is not well served by the cataloguer mania for knowing just what information to suppress.) 

Of course, anyone who followed the recent autocat thread on the death of MARC and especially the introduction of databases like XOBIS will suspect that this is merely a death rattle.



RICHARD NOBLE : RARE BOOKS CATALOGER : JOHN HAY LIBRARY : BROWN UNIVERSITY
PROVIDENCE, RI 02912 : 401-863-1187/FAX 863-2093 : RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU 

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